Britons lax on web security even as 90% surf online

Over 78% of smartphones do not have security installed

Internet use in Britain has risen to record levels but there is a worrying lack of awareness around security, figures show.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) found 89 per cent of adults used the internet at least weekly this year, a rise of one percentage point on last year and up from 51 per cent in 2006.

The proportion of adults who bought goods or services online also rose slightly to 78 per cent — and is 25 percentage points higher than in 2008.

Despite the ever-increasing reach of the internet — 90 per cent of households had online access this year — the ONS found significant gaps in security awareness. While smartphones are the most popular devices used to access the internet, with 78 per cent of respondents doing so, just over a quarter (26 per cent) of smartphone users said they did not have security installed and a further 24 per cent did not know whether they did or not.

Your life is online

Despite concerns about privacy online, particularly in the wake of the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal, the ONS also found that of adults who used a smartphone, only 31 per cent of those aged 65 and over had refused access to personal data when using phone apps in the last 12 months. The figure was 65 per cent among 16- to 24-year-olds.

Bill Buchanan, a professor of computing at Edinburgh Napier University, said: “The mobile phone is the danger for us. With a mobile phone, someone can be tracking your location and they can even be turning on your camera or location tracker.

“You can track someone from birth to death these days and have a record of every minute of their life through Google searches. That’s pretty sensitive information and we have to understand that Google has that information.”